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I can’t sleep

In the old Nintendo video game Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, when you run out of lives, the screen turns red with a large shadowy figure announcing the return of the big bad guy who was defeated in the first game. The music of the game stops and is replaced by a sinister laughter to add to the sense of doom created by the loss of your character.

I’m reminded of that image as I see the results of this year’s election.

I was born in 1972 and, to date, I have seen five presidents whose political party was Republican. The order in which they served is, in my opinion, the same as the descending order of their quality as stewards of the nation. I have more positive things to say about Nixon than I do about Ford, and then they take a sharp decline downhill from Reagan, to Bush Sr, to Bush Jr.

In that time, the Republican Party has ceased to be a party that stands for what is right and good about America. They stand for unfettered greed, destruction of the environment, reckless spending, military aggression, authoritarianism, and the tearing down of the wall of separation between church and state. And their biggest selling point is fear.

Make someone afraid and you can get them to do just about anything.

So, yeah, I’m disappointed by the results of the election today. Donald Trump, a man whose public policy statements have been at best constitutionally questionable, has apparently won the election. This wasn’t supposed to happen, pure and simple.

Commodities and stock markets around the world have already started to react negatively to this news. And there’s no question that we’re in for a bumpy ride at least for the next two years, if not the next four. I think we can safely predict an uptick in terrorist attacks, economic turmoil, and general bad times as a result of this election.

But I’m an optimist. Maybe Trump will surprise us and reneg on some of his more outrageous promises (like the wall on the Mexican border, the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, or an attempt to overturn Roe vs Wade). Maybe the democrats In congress — with or without the help of some republicans — will grow a spine and rebuff him the way the republicans often rebuffed President Obama.

Regardless, this should strengthen our resolve to keep fighting. Fighting for what’s right about America, especially now that an easy symbol of what’s wrong with America is about to move into the White House. Let’s still fight to preserve the environment, civil rights for all minorities, economic justice, education, health care, scientific literacy, and, most importantly, freedom.

After all, even after you’ve lost all of your lives in that video game, you can still defeat the evil dictator.